Trump also grew concerned as the virus spread to Trump country. “The polling sucked. The campaign panicked about the numbers in red states. They don’t expect to win states that are getting blown to pieces with coronavirus,” a former West Wing official told me. From the beginning of the crisis, Trump had struggled to see it as anything other than a political problem, subject to his usual arsenal of tweets and attacks and bombast. But he ultimately realized that as bad as the stock market was, getting coronavirus wrong would end his presidency. “The campaign doesn’t matter anymore,” he recently told a friend, “what I do now will determine if I get reelected.”

As y’all know I have a special interest in Tennessee, given that I decamped the state for the duration. I’ve been watching Governor Bill Lee demonstrate why simply being a businessman who ultimately ran his daddy’s company doesn’t necessarily make you leadership material. Here, the essential Tennessee Holler makes mincemeat of the gov on Twitter, with his own words.

WATCH — @NC5PhilWilliams: “The medical community has been pleading with you for 10+ days for a shelter-in-place mandate… are you concerned lives may be lost because of the delay?”@GovBillLee: “there are varying opinions” – “we made the right decision” – “the storm is passing” pic.twitter.com/sqCaGc9S6S

About The Author

Brendan Skwire is a cultural and media critic. He offers nearly two decades of experience as a journalist, video editor, blogger, and community organizer. Skwire has worked for the Philadelphia Weekly, Scrapple TV, and Raw Story, and is a former member of the News Guild.

I only feel bad for the people that didn’t vote for Trump. The rest of them have wished death on people like me for years. I simply don’t care if they live or die, and in fact I have a preference for the latter.

It’s not nice, but I own it. I ain’t no nice guy, and never have been.

What’s really frustrating about Tennessee compared to other southern states is that their health department is top notch. They attract some of the best talent and pay well comparatively. A lot of this is because their grant writer knows how to bring in the bacon, but they are better prepared for this compared to, say, South Carolina. And yet…

I’m sorry but I’ve seen what’s going on and that isn’t exactly accurate. For example, for weeks the TDH refused to say how many ventilators they had, and now the gov says they don’t have enough. That’s weak as shit. Same with the rural hospital closures, I think it’s up to 15 now, second only to Texas. Now, maybe good doctors are overrepresented in the metro areas—I can’t speak for Memphis and Knoxville, but with Vanderbilt and HCA there’s a lot of good docs in Nashville—and that skews the overall picture. I don’t know, I am not any kind of… Read more »

I don’t know the entire story of their health care system as a system, and I’m not commenting on that aspect. I mean, TN never expanded Medicaid, and they sure as shit don’t fund “health care”. But they have a lot of good people at the “dept. of public health”, their epidemiologists are first rate, and a lot of people in disease control want to work there because of this. It’s possible that without their talented grant writers that they’d be starved just like the rest of the south, but if it’s being utilized terribly, that’s on the political leadership.